This is the first chapter to have really major spoilers for The Bride and The Widow. The victor of the Seventy-Second Hunger Games will feature towards the end so... be warned.


Agrippinia Michili, District 2

"It's an unforgiving world

But she's not an unforgiving girl."

Car Seat Headrest, Unforgiving Girl (She's Not An)


Ten Reasons why Agrippinia Michili was the Greatest Career of All Time

1. She was raised by a victor.

Agrippinia Michili was an orphan. Her father had been killed during the rebellion and her mother had died in childbirth. She spent the first eleven years of her life in a community home, fighting over scraps of food. Some kids grew skinny from losing too many fights.

Not Agrippinia. She won every time.

So when Romulus Diodato came searching for the perfect child to train up for the Hunger Games, he saw a room full of malnourished kids and one lean eleven-year old with violence burning in her eyes.

The next thing Agrippinia knew, she was on her way to Victor's Village.


2. She had to adapt.

Romulus went away every year to mentor, leaving Agrippinia with a nanny. He always came back with a new piece of advice.

"You need to make the Capitol like you," he said after the Twelfth Games, "Three won this year with the biggest teacher's pet I have ever seen. I'm going to see if I can get you etiquette lessons, kid."

"You need to have a variety of weapons at your disposal," he said after the Thirteenth Games, "One won this year because their girl could throw darts. I want to see you shoot arrows at targets for the next two hours."

"You need to know which tributes to target," he said after the Fourteenth Games, "Five won this year with some pretty-boy volunteer who hogged all the sponsors. I managed to secure tapes of every Hunger Games so far. We are going to watch them and I want you to rank all the tributes based on when you would target them."

"You need to learn how to survive in the wilderness," He said after the Fifteenth Games, "Ten won this year because their girl knew how to climb a tree and find food and water in a forest. Pack light. We're going camping."

By the time Romulus deemed Agrippinia old enough to volunteer, she'd had to change her entire strategy several times.


3. She founded the Career alliance.

The Sixteenth Hunger Games was the first to allow tributes three days of training before the games. The training days were added to give the tributes a chance to learn some basic survival skills so they wouldn't all just die immediately, like they'd done the previous year.

But Agrippinia didn't plan on using her training days to learn survival skills. She went straight for the weapons and started shooting arrows at dummies. Her district partner, a quarry worker named Lucius soon began attacking dummies with his own weapon of choice - a spiked mace. Agrippinia noticed that they weren't the only ones.

The tributes from District 4 were practicing with a trident and a knife. The pair from District 1, both sports champions, seemed to be masters of the spear and the sword.

Six kids. Six different weapons. Together, they'd be unstoppable, the toughest alliance in the Hunger Games.

"Hey, Lucius," Agrippinia hissed to her district partner, "What do you think of an alliance with One and Four?"


4. She broke records.

The moment the countdown stopped, Agrippinia made a run straight for the Cornucopia. It took her ten seconds to reach a bow and quiver of arrows and shoot the gorgeous girl from District 6 - the transport district's first real shot at a victor - right through the eye.

Ten seconds into the games, Agrippinia had broken two records. She was the first tribute to ever kill another with a bow and arrow and she'd achieved the quickest kill with that particular weapon in Hunger Games history. Many legendary archers would follow in her footsteps - most of them Careers - but none of them would ever shoot another tribute before the ten second mark had passed. Agrippinia's record would never be broken.

Neither would her record of eleven kills. The only person who'd ever match her would be her son, Brutus.


5. She saved her ally.

Ten days into the games, Agrippinia and her allies were stalking through a ruined city, searching for the outliers who'd escaped their alliance. They now showed the faces of the dead in the sky, so Agrippinia knew the only tributes remaining were both from Three, the girl from Five and the boy from Eight. They'd spent a handful of days unable to find anyone.

The gamemakers were bored.

Suddenly, a giant tornado whirled towards Agrippinia's alliance, picking up the six tributes like leaves. The girl from Four was hit by a piece of airborne concrete and died instantly. Lucius became trapped under some rubble when he was thrown back against a crumbling building. The others were all scattered across the arena.

Agrippinia was the first to find Lucius. She put all her strength into lifting up the heavy pieces of concrete. She didn't want her district partner to be crushed to death, like every quarry-worker's nightmare.

Of course, after that, he had a concussion and several broken bones. Agrippinia stabbed him through the heart to put him out of his misery.


6. She killed with honour.

The remaining Careers spread out, searching for outliers. Agrippinia found the boy from Eight, who had gone without food for several days. He didn't put up much of a fight.

The others weren't so lucky.

The alliance between the girl from Five and the boy from Three outnumbered and overpowered the boy from Four. The fencing champion from One was caught in the girl from Three's electrical trap before his javelin-throwing ally could spear the other girl.

After two weeks of the Hunger Games, Agrippinia was ambushed by the Three-Five alliance. The two outliers may have been able to defeat a fisher-boy with very little combat experience but they were no match for a trained fighter. By the end of the fight, both outliers were dead and the only injury Agrippinia had was a small scratch on her arm.

Agrippinia bowed her head to her opponents' corpses, remembering from her lessons on past Hunger Games that District 3's only mentor had a fondness for honour and etiquette.

"You were worthy opponents. You did your districts proud. Thank you."

The final battle of the games was between Agrippinia and her former ally. Satine was a javelin champion, just like her mentor, Emerald Kiesler. Their final battle was one of the most intense, evenly-matched battles of the first few decades of the Hunger Games. At long range, both girls had the skill to wound each other several times but the agility and endurance not to allow themselves to be fatally wounded. The tide of the battle really began to turn as Agrippinia gradually began to move closer and closer to Satine. Once she was close enough, she could end the games with one slice of her sword and Satine didn't have the close-range skills to defend herself.

"I'm sorry, Satine," Agrippinia said, as the hovercraft came to lift her to safety, "You were better than most victors. Any other year and you could've won."


7. She protected other victors.

Since Agrippinia was District 2's first female victor, Romulus immediately put her in charge of training and mentoring female tributes. While Romulus would go on to struggle against other male victors to keep his title as Victor's Village's best father figure, all of the victors were in agreement that Agrippinia was the best mother figure.

District 2's next female victor, Vitellia Tonioli, had the difficult task of volunteering the year after the First Quarter Quell. Agrippinia tried her best to give the girl the confidence she'd need to win, reassuring her that the Quell would never happen again. After the games, she helped Vitellia remove all the mirrors from her house, knowing how the mirrors made Vitellia uncomfortable.

Four years later, a girl named Trajia Romeo won, a shy, pretty girl. When Trajia told Agrippinia what Capitol men had started doing to her at night, she tried her hardest to comfort the poor girl.

If Agrippinia hadn't had marriage vows to keep and a child yet to be born, maybe she'd have offered herself up in Trajia's place.

She kept an eye on the other girls as well. She found out what Granitte Sacro did to keep herself out of Capitol men's beds and she kept it to herself. She comforted Lyme di Maggio when her son was reaped. She tried to talk Enobaria Rossetti out of that surgery on her teeth.

She knew she'd never be able to really make a difference, never be able to set her fellow victors free from guilt and grief and trauma, but she tried anyway.


8. She came out of retirement to mentor her son - twice!

Brutus Michili took his mother's surname. There was nothing wrong with his father. He only chose his mother's name because the name of a victor meant a lot, especially in District 2.

He volunteered for the Forty-Ninth Games, when he was eighteen and his mother was forty-nine. Agrippinia had known that it was coming. She'd known that it would be hard. She'd still signed up to mentor her son.

When Brutus won his games, it was the happiest moment of Agrippinia's life. It wasn't because his victory had been glorious. It had been out of relief that her son would get to live.

Then the Quell was announced...

The victors from District 2 had called a meeting to see who was going to volunteer. Agrippinia watched Brutus shoot down every other male victor's hopes to volunteer. Constantine was in his seventies. Tacitus had grandchildren. Tarquin was barely out of the arena, having had nowhere near enough time to enjoy the perks of being a victor.

It was clear that Brutus really wanted to go back into the arena.

Agrippinia didn't have the heart to tell her son that he'd be going into that arena with twenty-three other victors, many of whom would be younger and stronger. She just quietly agreed to mentor her son for a second time.


9. She died like a hero.

All the mentors from Two were sick.

Agrippinia, Tacitus and Trajia all lay on the floor of the Control Centre in puddles of their own vomit. Granitte was dying, choking to death on hers. Somewhere, through her confusion and panic over her sudden sickness just as her son had started fighting Chaff from Eleven, Agrippinia remembered that girl from Three, the poisoner, leaving the room when her mentor had died and never coming back. She remembered the misfortune that had plagued the girl, a heart attack, a house fire and an overdose having claimed most of her family and friends. They'd seemed like tragic accidents at the time, nothing more.

Tragic 'accidents', the kind that Granitte specialised in.

There were peacekeepers at the door. Some of the other victors, the ones who were mentoring that big alliance, had barricaded it and that drunkard from Twelve, Haymitch Abernathy, was making his escape through a window, helped by one of the younger victors, the wild-haired pyromaniac.

Agrippinia struggled to her feet. Some of the other victors looked at her warily but she held her hands up.

"What... are you... doing..." she asked, weakly.

The other victors exchanged glances, clearly trying to figure out if the legendary Career would be a threat, even with her old age and her mysterious illness.

"Tell her," the younger mentor from Three said, without even looking up from her computer. Agrippinia remembered the girl's games from three years ago, how she'd also mercy-killed her district partner.

"We're taking down the Capitol," Saorise Current, the one-eyed mentor from Four who Agrippinia had met the first time she'd mentored Brutus, said. Agrippinia liked Saorise. She was the only other victor who'd mentored their own child to victory, though Saorise's daughter hadn't volunteered for the Quell like Brutus had.

She wasn't surprised at all that Saorise would join the rebellion. Agrippinia had been taught from a young age to make the Capitol like her but she'd always disliked the way that they'd forced victors into things. Now they'd forced her son into the Quell, it was the final straw.

"I want to help," Agrippinia said, "For Brutus."

She joined the other victors in their circle around the girl from Three. At first, she thought it was because, at twenty-one, she was the youngest victor in the room, currently the fourth youngest victor in Panem. Then she realised it was because the girl was still tapping away at a computer.

A hacker in the Control Centre was like a Career in the Cornucopia. Surrounded by weapons that only they could use well.

When the peacekeepers burst though the door and bullets thudded into Agrippinia's body, she hoped she'd bought the hacker girl enough time to make a difference.


10. She was the first.

Agrippinia Michili was the first ever Career tribute.

As she won, Romulus Diodato called up his friend, Minister for the Hunger Games, Coriolanus Snow, and asked if he wanted more strong, Capitol-loving victors. Plans for a training academy in Two were drawn up, then and there.

Emerald Kiesler overheard half of this conversation, put two and two together and called Snow to ask him the same thing. He was sick of waiting for sporty kids to be reaped. He wanted to make District 1 great. He wanted his district to forgive him.

As for Surf Depthell, he tried the same thing as Emerald just seconds after the first ever volunteer had lowered his communicuff. Snow refused him permission to build an academy, simply because District 4 was a little too rebellious to be granted a training academy. But Surf had liked the look of the alliance between One, Two and Four. He planned to begin a ruthless search for Coriolanus Snow's secrets as soon as he could. He'd get District 4 a training academy even if it involved blackmail.

Without Agrippinia's victory, it would've taken far longer for these mentors to get their training academies. Perhaps some of them might not even have thought of it at all. If Agrippinia Michili hadn't won her games, Careers may never have become what they did.


We've finally made it to the first ever Career! Agrippinia's one of the more noble Careers. She's definitely worthy of her legendary status. District 2's victors are all quite close, apart from Aeneas and Mars, who aren't particularly social. Every Victor's Village has a different feel and District 2 is one of the more close-knit Victor's villages. Most of them aren't as vicious as they were in the arena.

We also get a glimpse of what the major characters from The Bride and the Widow are doing during the rebellion. What's Ramona up to? Is it a coincidence that Stallie and the District 2 mentors all fell ill at the same time? Will Binah survive the shootout? And - perhaps the most important question of all - where is Lumas? All will be revealed in time...